Into the fray: The unilateral two-state initiative endorsed by INSS this week is clearly not a ‘creative’ pro-peace measure but a demonstrably anti-settler one.

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They
come to be accepted by degrees... by dint of constant pressure on one side and
constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to
be the country’s official ideology. – Ayn Rand, 1965

O, who can hold a fire in
his hand; By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of
appetite; By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow; By
thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? – From William Shakespeare’s Richard II

I am
appalled. Just how long will politically biased claptrap be allowed to
masquerade as serious policy research?

"Creative” capitulation

When I wrote last
week’s column, “The coming canard: “Constructive unilateralism,” I was unaware
that, this week, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) would hold
its sixth annual conference in Tel Aviv. Traditionally titled “Security
Challenges of the 21st Century,” the focus this year was billed as “Creative
Ideas for Israel’s Changing Strategic Environment.”

The speaker line-up
was undeniably impressive, with an array of well-known figures from Israel and
abroad – politicians, senior military officers and government officials, media
personalities, academics and policy analysts.

The program spanned a range
of worthy topics that extended beyond purely military and security spheres,
including social, economic and diplomatic matters as well.

On some issues
the recommendations made, and conclusions drawn, seemed sensible and
well-grounded – although I did puzzle over why they may merit the description
“creative.”

Thus for example, I found myself endorsing the findings of
the team dealing with the question of how to contend with the threat of a
nuclear Iran, which urged the US to opt for “strengthening the credibility of
the military alternative,” remarking that “the Iranian leadership does not
really feel threatened. This impairs the effectiveness of the diplomatic
alternative.”

Likewise I tend to concur with the policy prescription for
Israeli decision-makers: “...

if all options have failed, and the
government of Israel has to choose between an Iranian bomb and the bombing of
Iran, it should choose the option of bombing Iran....”

But when it comes
to the Palestinian issue, things differ dramatically. Indeed, here the only
“creative” suggestion is complete – and completely counterproductive –
capitulation.

Poor political science

Readers will recall that last week I
warned that comprehensive, coordinated and concerted efforts are being initiated
to promote a nonsensical notion, perversely dubbed “constructive unilateralism”
(hereinunder CU).

In broad strokes, CU advocates declare a priori – and independently of any reciprocal measure from the Palestinians – that Israel should:

• Renounce any claims to sovereignty beyond a pre-determined line (roughly the present route of the separation barrier, i.e.virtually the entire area of Judea-Samaria);• Remove all Jewish civil presence across this line either by financial inducements (by offering monetary compensation for evacuation), economic strangulation (by ceasing any development of Jewish communities in the area) or physical abandonment (by transferring control to the Palestinian Authority); and• Leave the IDF deployed in areas evacuated, and in territory over which Israel concedes it has no claims to sovereignty.

Clearly, were these measures to be implemented, the
political reality that would prevail in the evacuated territories would be
largely similar to that which prevailed in pre-2000 South Lebanon, and we all
remember how that ended – with the hasty retreat of the IDF and the empowerment
of Hezbollah.

Thus, any suggestion to replicate those realities – only
this time on a much a larger scale and closer to Israel’s coastal megatropolis –
is based on atrociously poor political science and grievous political amnesia.
Or worse, a surreptitious and sinister hidden agenda. Read on...

Seamless
symbiosis – a reminder

I pointed out that the entity publicly promoting the
CU-initiative is an organization called Blue and White Future (B&WF), which
describes itself as “a nonpartisan political movement... funded by private
donors in Israel... and elsewhere.”

There is, however, an extensive
overlap between individuals involved in, the ideas promoted and the vehicles of
publication employed by B&WF and INSS, that reveal an almost seamless
symbiosis between the two entities, with the former tasked with public activism
and the latter with providing the intellectual bona fides.

My diagnosis
was dramatically validated this week, at the INSS conference, when the major
elements of the CU-concept were given extensive exposure and emphatic
endorsement. In a session titled “The Palestinian Issue: Towards a Reality of
Two States,” the INSS findings/recommendations were presented by Gilead Sher,
co-founder/ chairman of B&WF and a senior research fellow at INSS, who headed
the institute’s team that dealt with the study of the topic.

I wish I
could find a way to say this more diplomatically, as I have no personal
animosity for anyone involved in the compilation of the almost seven-page
document produced by the team. Indeed, in some cases quite the opposite. But,
sadly I cannot.

The INSS document does discredit to all those associated
with its composition – certainly professionally, and perhaps ethically as well.
It is difficult to know what is more disturbing – whether the authors really
believed what they wrote (stupendously stupid) or whether they did not
(surreptitiously sinister).

For those of you who might find this
assessment excessively harsh, I urge you: Don’t take my word for it. Read the
document, available on the INSS site, for yourself.

Oxymorons and non
sequiturs galore

Why any self-respecting analyst or institute would wish to have
its name linked with such a flawed and flimsy position paper is a mystery,
riddled as it is with self contradictions and non sequiturs.

Thus for
example, on page 2, the INSS team notes that “Fatah, the moderate Palestinian
negotiating partner, is growing weaker domestically, at a time that the radicals
in the Hamas leadership are growing stronger...”

They reiterate this on
the next page: “The past year saw... the militant Gaza leadership [grow]
stronger.”

Yet somehow this brings them to conclude almost immediately –
one sentence removed – that this “suggests the possibility of a pragmatic policy
toward Israel...." As I said, don’t take my word – read it yourself.

True,
they do try to base this breathtaking optimism on the claim that newly reelected
Hamas boss Khaled Mashaal “is working toward a rapprochement with Qatar, moving
away from Syria and Iran, and moving toward an internal reconciliation with
Fatah.”

This of course is a claim that brings new dimensions to the
notion of “clutching at straws.”

I guess the INSS experts were too busy
writing their report to have seen the recent chilling Channel 2 report that
strongly suggests that rather than reconciliation with Fatah moderating Hamas,
it appears that Hamas is radicalizing Fatah.

A lighter shade of black?

But the INSS invoking the Hamas rapprochement with Qatar, moving away from Syria
and Iran, as a ray of hope is more than somewhat puzzling.

Indeed, in the
preceding paragraph they write, “Hamas is continuing its relationship with Iran,
particularly on military issues and weapons smuggling... Qatar’s economic
support for the organization has increased.”

Surely, this suggests that a
more plausible conclusion would be that the enhanced links with Qatar are in
fact allowing greater militarization of Hamas and sustaining its ties to Iran –
at least on the military level, by facilitating its procurement of arms from it?
After all, although the Qatari regime is undisputably less “kinetically
inimical” to Israel than the Assad regime and theocratic rulers of Tehran, let’s
not forget whom we are dealing with.

After all, it was Qatar that broke
off relations with Israel because the IDF was compelled to defend Israeli
citizens against incessant rocket attacks; it was Qatar that launched a “fund to
protect Jerusalem from Jews” (Haaretz’s words, not mine – March 25.); it is
Qatar that is supporting the anti- Assad rebels that are if anything likely to
be just as inimical towards Israel; and that, according to The New York Times
(October 14, 2012), is one of the major funders of arms for “hard-line Islamic
jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to
bolster.”

A compelling case could be made that the Qatar-Hamas
rapprochement has not made Hamas less savage, just more sophisticated, not less
inimical only more influential, not more amicable, merely more affluent. But
that would not sit well with the feasibility of the CU paradigm.Locked
in time warp

The bulk of the INSS policy-related conclusions are so detached
from reality that they could have been written by someone trapped in a time
warp, totally isolated from ongoing events and oblivious to the tectonic changes
that rocked the region in the past three years. The attitude towards other
regional players, slated to play a role in ensuring the success of the CU
paradigm, particularly Egypt and Jordan, seems reminiscent of the euphoric
Oslowian period.

Although they pay lip service to the turmoil raging
across the region, stating somewhat euphemistically, “The increasing strength of
those who identify with political Islam in Arab countries is... worrisome,” the
INSS experts opine that the “rapprochement between Egypt and Hamas has not led
to a deterioration in Egypt’s attitude to Israel or to radicalization in
Hamas.”

This of course may prompt the uninformed layman to ask, “How much
more radicalized can Hams get before it is deemed radical,” and to reach the
conclusion that the manifest deterioration in Egypt’s attitude towards Israel
must be due to factors other than the rapprochement with the” un-radicalized”
Islamist terror group.

Moreover, given the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover
of Egypt and the ascendant Islamist forces in Jordan, it is not easy to
understand the rationale behind the INSS recommendation: “Including Egypt and
Jordan in the process would help Israel demand guarantees for peace in the
Palestinian Authority’s areas....” Or that “it might be wise to invite Turkey to
participate...

in a third party delegation, especially given the thaw in
diplomatic relations and the positions Turkey has expressed in the
past...”

Thaw? Really? Past opinions? Like Zionism being “a crime against
humanity.” Like berating Syria for not retaliating against Israel? Who could ask
for more from an impartial honest broker!

Counseling complete compliance

The
INSS team recommends Israel adopt a position of complete compliance with
Palestinian demands, counseling that Israel should “... take steps such as
releasing Fatah prisoners, reducing the number of checkpoints and allowing freer
movement, refraining from imposing economic punitive measures, expanding PA
security activities in Area B.”

I leave the readers to assess the
prudence of these prescriptions – particularly in view of the precedents, and to
ponder the operational significance of this: “At the same time, Israel will work
to encourage quiet in the Gaza Strip.” I wonder how. By tiptoeing so as not to
disturb the Islamists? Of course one wonders how the new Finance Minister Yair
Lapid, who has become a regular (and supportive) speaker at INSS conferences,
would relate to some of its other prescriptions. Addressing the conference,
Lapid warned that Israel’s economy could not stand the burden of the
ultra-Orthodox social welfare payments (about 0.8 percent of the national
budget).

It would therefore be most intriguing to learn how he would
assess the INSS recommendation that “Israel should work to strengthen the
infrastructure of the Palestinian state... providing extensive economic aid such
as encouraging Palestinian projects in Area C....”Showing your hand in a
Mideast bazaar

It would probably take a 15,000-word essay to deal adequately
with all the defects in the 2,800-word INSS document. But neither time not space
– nor editor’s patience – permit. So let me conclude with two points.

The
INSS team proposes perhaps the worst of all bargaining techniques in the Mideast
bazaar in which Israel exists: Showing your hand at the very outset of the
negotiation. Thus, although they prescribe that Israel should pursue
negotiations, the concessions it is to make should not depend on the outcome of
those negotiations.

They stipulate: “The ‘independent option’ as a
political strategy is intended primarily to promote two states for two peoples
if negotiations with the Palestinians fail,” advocating that once it “has
exhausted the possibilities for negotiating a settlement... Israel will initiate
independent measures [read ‘unilateral withdrawal from almost all
Judea-Samaria’].”

So Israel should exhaust the possibility of a
negotiated withdrawal, presumably in exchange for some quid pro quo – but if
negotiations fail, it should withdraw anyway, immediately raising the question
of what could possible induce the other side to negotiate when they know that
they will get all they want if they don’t?

Anti-settler not pro peace?

All this
leaves us to puzzle over what would prompt well-known figures and a renowned
policy institute to devise such a perverse potpourri of failed elements, and to
endeavor to peddle it as an innovative, creative policy initiative, rather than
a transparent attempt to revamp old, disproven efforts, in a new and misleading
semantic wrapping comprised of inapt epithets such as “constructive,”
“proactive” and “independent.”

For clearly, even if implemented, it will
have little chance of forging a durable peace. It will, however, spell the end
of the settlements in Judea-Samaria – just as the disengagement did for Gaza. As
such it should be considered not a constructive, pro-peace initiative but a
destructive, anti-settlement one.

Perhaps that would also explain the
affinity for Yair Lapid, who once fervently endorsed the disengagement as “our
only chance for a normal life” but later admitted: It had nothing to do with...
the desire to make peace... [but] merely... that the settlers should be taught a
lesson in humility....”

Sites Of Interest

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